Blog Introduction

Hello everyone. I'm a keyboard player. I've been playing piano since the age of 6 or 7, taking formal lessons until I was 16. At that time I got my first keyboard, an awful Casio thing that I didn't know wasn't very good. Since then I've had many other better synthesizers and keyboards that I've used to create music. Eventually I sold most of them and until recently only owned a digital piano.

One thing I've never done in over 18 years of playing with synthesizers is actually learn about the fundamentals of electronic music and synthesis. I've never learned how to create my own sounds or how those sounds are produced.

In late 2008, my family and I casually stopped into a music store/guitar center while we were waiting for a particularly long haircut queue. I found a cool little keyboard with a built in microphone/vocoder. It was the Korg R3 (pictured above). That few minutes of playtime I had with it inspired my wife to find one for me for Christmas. In anticipation of receiving the synthesizer, I started to look more into it by reading reviews and watching YouTube clips. I realized that this synth was actually a lot cooler than just a keyboard with a microphone. And suddenly I realized that if I was going to get any real use out of it, I'd better learn as much as I can.

That has currently opened a Pandora's Box for me as I've recently begun learning more about things like subtractive synthesis, LFOs, Oscillators, and other elements of classic analog synthesizers. It's captured my attention and I decided to create this blog as a sort of journal as well as a gathering place for me to put all the great information I'm learning about synthesizers. So this blog is mainly for me, but maybe it will help others who are looking for similar information to assist them in learning about synthesizers.